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Burton Loveday’s new farm with 16 growing rooms, each of 500m2.
ring province of Saskatchewan . This situation makes the market highly interesting for Loveday. The closest mushroom farm is 1300 kilometres away in Calgary, Alberta. The mushroom farms in eastern neighbour Ontario are clustered around Toronto, at a distance of 2300 kilometres, which means they form absolutely no competition at all for Loveday. Winnipeg enjoys a central geographical position and is an important rail transportation hub linking the west and east coasts, as well as being a significant link in transport routes to and from the USA. These factors have attracted a population of that currently numbers 700,000, giving Winnipeg the accolade of being the coldest city in the world of its size. This makes the location of the farm interesting for many reasons. The Lovelady family does not have much to fear from new competition, something that owes a lot to the climate. Canadian winters are generally long and cold, but in the centrally located provinces the temperatures dip so low it’s like living in a freezer. This has earned the capital of Manitoba the nickname ‘Winterpeg’. The average earthling judges the winter weather con- ditions in Manitoba as extremely severe and cold, but Winnipeg natives consider these harsh conditions as
Loveday’s new tunnel facility.
just part of ordinary life. I can speak from experience having regularly seen how they go about their daily lives quite relaxed and contented to work in the snow and icy conditions, at temperatures that often fall below -30 degrees Celsius. In January this year the tempe- rature even reached -40, during the coldest winter recorded for forty years. By contrast, summers here can be scorchingly hot.
Old site The old part of the farm is in an industrial area that nudges against the built-up area of Winnipeg. Com- posting is done in five bunkers. The bales of straw are pre-wet in a separate bunker that has no aeration, but a steam injection system instead. On the same site, four tunnels built by the Canadian company Double T Equipment were used for many years, but these tunnels became redundant when the new tunnel facility started operating. All the compost is now transported from the old site to the new tunnel facility, a 20-minute journey, where the phase II and III process takes place. The old site is also home to some weighing and packing rooms, but the plan is to relocate these functions shortly to the new site, where Burton plans to build a new packing warehouse. There are plenty more changes on the cards as Burton also intends to build a new composting plant to produce fresh compost in the near future. The final step for the moment in the process is possibly moving the current production in trays to the planned new-build growing rooms with the Dutch shelving sys- tem, so the company can meet the demand for superior quality mushrooms.
The bales are covered with ice even before the process starts
Phase I The process starts in a so-called ‘phase zero’ bun- ker, where instead of air being pumped through the material, steam is injected instead. The huge difference between the outside and the inside of the straw bales is remarkable. In winter the bales are snowy white and frosty, glazed with icicles on the outside, while on the inside all the bales have a uniform warm, soft and dark appearance after the pre-wet process in this phase zero bunker (as the photos clearly show). The steam injected into the bales produces a lot of moisture in and around them and this vapour is immediately transfor- med into snow and ice on the outside surface, even though the bales are stacked two-high indoors in the
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